Source
Blanke & Metzinger (2009), LIT-1274, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13(1), read in full in NOTE-1002: the definitions and Box 1 (pp. 7–8), partial against global ownership (pp. 9–10), Box 2 and the clinical cases (pp. 9–11), full-body illusions (pp. 11–12) and the conclusion (p. 12). Lenggenhager et al. (2007), LIT-1279, read in full with its supplement and e-letters in NOTE-999, is the full-body illusion the paper leans on most.
What was actually shown
The THEORY has three parts, and they rest on evidence of different kinds.
The three dimensions. Blanke and Metzinger define minimal phenomenal selfhood (MPS) as “the conscious experience of being a self”, in its simplest form (p. 7). It has three dimensions:
- self-identification with the body as a whole;
- self-location, a felt volume of space;
- a weak first-person perspective, the geometrical origin of an egocentric model.
“We claim that spatiotemporal self-location, self-identification and weak 1PP are necessary and sufficient for MPS” (Box 1). This is a definition, not a finding. What the evidence shows is that the three can be disturbed separately:
- In autoscopic hallucination a second own body is seen, but all three dimensions stay normal.
- In out-of-body experience all three move to an illusory, usually elevated body.
- In heautoscopy they can sit at either body or alternate.
- In one stimulation case, the visual perspective stayed at the body while self-location was felt 2 m behind it.
These come from small lesion series and case reports (Box 2, pp. 9–12).
The full-body illusion. In Lenggenhager et al., synchronous stroking of a body seen 2 m ahead in a head-mounted display shifted felt self-location toward it by about 17–25 cm (two groups of 14). Synchronous stroking also produced reported self-identification with that body (Q3, 2.1 on a −3 to 3 scale for one’s own filmed body). No one reported disembodiment or a change of visual perspective. A mannequin worked; a rectangular object gave a smaller, non-significant drift and no self-identification. This is the evidence that multisensory conflict can move the first two dimensions without the third.
Part against whole, and agency. The rubber hand illusion and somatoparaphrenia “are only associated with changes in partial ownership and do not enable the investigation of MPS” (p. 9). From the clinical and experimental data the authors conclude that “a passive, multisensory and globalized experience of ‘owning’ a body is sufficient for minimal conscious selfhood”, and that “bodily agency is a causally enabling, but not a constitutive condition, for phenomenal selfhood” (p. 12).
What this does not say
- The part–whole split rests on what was not measured. The claim that the rubber hand leaves MPS untouched comes from the fact that those studies “do not experimentally manipulate self-location, self-identification or the weak 1PP” (p. 9). No study is cited that measured them and found them unchanged. That is the first half of the promotion test.
- The agency thesis rests on adults. The patients had agency before their lesions, and the illusion participants had it intact but unused. The authors grant that agency “causally enables MPS in practically all humans”. The evidence shows that MPS can be altered without agency at the time. It does not show that a system that never had agency could have MPS, and the further claim about “a disembodied, non-neural, artificial system possessing no effectors” is conceptual.
- Box 1 is loose. The dimensions are called necessary and sufficient under a heading for conditions “that are not sufficient”, followed by “Perhaps one or more of them are not individually necessary”. The text also allows that agency “might be a sufficient condition for MPS” (p. 12). The THEORY’s title takes the three as the content of minimal selfhood. It does not take them as each strictly necessary.
- The full-body evidence is modest and contested. In Lenggenhager et al.’s study II, the own-body condition did not differ significantly between synchronous and asynchronous stroking. The drift for one’s own body was not shown to differ from that for the object. In the e-letters, Ehrsson & Petkova argued that participants may have been recognising themselves in a video system, not owning a body. The design has no condition that separates the two.
- The paper names no way to manipulate opacity. It offers a graded form of the self-model theory’s transparency claim: opacity weakens self-identification. Its evidence is reports of how real the experience is, so it does not test THEORY-064’s distinctive claim.
Added on 2026-10-20
- The full-body evidence inherits the hand’s problems. Lenggenhager et al. used Botvinick & Cohen’s questionnaire and a synchronous–asynchronous comparison. Lush (2020, LIT-1276) and Roseboom & Lush (2022, LIT-1280) predict, without testing, the same expectation confound for the full-body illusion. Their walking-back drift is modelled on the hand drift, which Rohde et al. (2011, LIT-1281) found as large with vision alone. That the same holds for the walking-back measure is the record’s analogy, not a finding.
- Ownership and agency of a hand come apart in both directions. Kalckert & Ehrsson (2012, LIT-1273) gave ownership without agency by passive movement, and agency without ownership with a rotated hand. At the level of the hand this fits “agency enables but does not constitute”. But agency reports were stronger when the hand was owned, which runs the other way. The study measures nothing whole-body.
Connections
No relation is declared: no open question asks what the minimal self is made of.
- THEORY-458. Gallagher’s minimal self pairs ownership with agency. This THEORY splits ownership into part and whole, and takes agency out of the minimal self. The two disagree on what the minimal self is made of, not on any finding.
- NOTE-372, claim C6. Metzinger’s “simplest form of self-awareness” is narrowed here to global ownership. The rubber hand, the best-known manipulation of ownership, does not reach it.
- THEORY-765 is the part-ownership finding this THEORY says does not reach minimal selfhood. THEORY-769 and THEORY-767 treat part and whole ownership as one inference, so they sit in tension with the part–whole split; neither tests it.
- LIT-1009, NOTE-827. Haggard’s point that involuntary movement brings ownership without agency agrees with the agency thesis from the other side.
- LIT-1186. The line Lenggenhager et al. draw between illusory self-location and the disembodiment of an out-of-body experience is the line a reading of that study would need.